Game of Joes
by CrystalOfEllinon
Summary: Because of COURSE I have to write another piece of completely ridiculous and over-the-top crossover crackfic. Warning; SEVERE AU ahead, though everyone will stay in character. M for violence, cursing, sex, and other fun adult activities!
1. Chapter 1

_ Fire and steel and blood. _

In the end, it all came down to fire and steel and blood. They shaped the world. They gave men power, or brought powerful men down. Fire and steel and blood were the very pulse of the world; in centuries past, dragons had flown in the skies, and magic had not been so scarce. The dragons were creatures of fire; fire trapped in flesh and blood. Dragons had shaped the world. The Targaryens had risen to power on the backs of dragons, and with the loss of their dragons the family had fallen. With the death of the dragons, magic had all but died.

All but, though, means not quite. There were places that true power still lived, though it had to be fought for and those who used it paid a price. And there were stirrings again; things long dead were walking. Soon the smoke of a funeral pyre and the salt tears of a girl would wake dragons from stone, and the world would change.

The old wildling witch knew this. She'd Seen it, in the scrying pool in the wierwood grove where her cottage sat. It was a place of power, and for those few who still practiced magic places of power were important.

She'd seen other things in the pool; honorable men dying for the sin of speaking truth, broken families, a continent at war, five men fighting for the shattered remains of a great realm while darkness closed on them from the north, unseen and unheeded. She'd seen death and blood and sorrow and pain as brother fought brother for a throne of swords. She'd seen innocents die and suffer.

She'd seen a silver queen rise in the East on a throne of dragonfire that would cast back the darkness. But it would be too late for so many thousands; it was always the smallfolk who suffered, when the great lords marched to war.

The old wildling witch cared little about the complicated politics of the southern kingdoms. She was a free woman, wildling-born. She'd had a long life; she'd fought and loved, birthed and laughed, sorrowed and smiled. But she cared about people, even if they weren't her own.

So many would suffer. Good men would die.

But that was just a possible future. Prophecy was a tricky thing, and sometimes those who could See true could also see how to change things.

Power was all but gone. But not quite.

The old wilding witch pulled her sleeping furs aside. The knife was still there, wrapped carefully in oilcloth to keep the damp out. Her daughters watched silently, half awed and half frightened. They'd seen the knife but rarely, though they'd often heard of it. It was far too precious a thing to take up lightly.

The old woman was a witch. Her mother had been a witch before her and her grandmother before that. Her youngest daughter would be a witch after the old woman died. The art had been handed down mother to daughter for longer than Wilding memory could tell. Other things had been handed down too. Stories, for example, and this knife.

It was a very old knife. Her mother had told her its story.

There were other worlds, her mother had said. Not all of them are like ours. Not all have dragons. Not all have magic. But sometimes, just sometimes, the veils between the worlds can be thinned, and things can cross from one to the other.

Long ago, before the dragon kings, when magic ran fierce and hot through our world, a man from a strange world of stone and steel slipped into our world by chance. He spoke of cottages of steel and glass as tall as mountains, of metal birds that men rode through the air, of wheeled carts that moved by themselves, faster than any horse. He carried weapons that could spit fire and noise and death great distances. He knew nothing of magic, but a great deal about things beyond the ken of even the wise. Things of metal and of alchemy. Things of healing, and things of war.

A witch-woman had at last found a way to send him back to his own world, but he'd left her with a knife and a daughter in her belly. And from mother to daughter, story and knife had been passed down. And now, generations later, the old wildling witch held the knife.

She saw what was to happen. And she saw how to change it.

Power was all but gone. Real power carried a heavy price. The old wilding witch knew this.

Fire and steel and blood. The steel and the blood of another world, and the fire to turn both into power.

Sometimes the price was worth paying, however steep.

The pyre was ready. She'd built it of wierwood branches; they gleamed white as bone in the moonlight. It was cold; the old witch's breath misted in the air.

Steel and blood and fire to bring the greatest warriors of another world to this one. Warriors and weapons such as Westeros had never seen. Men and women beholden to no king or lord, and weapons of fire and steel that made swords and spears into child's toys. Warriors and weapons to turn the tide against the dead, until the Silver Queen and the Prince that was Promised grew into their own prophecy and dragonfire burned away the ice of the Others.

Her daughters followed her, still silent. The elder of the two was gripping her spear so tightly that her knuckles were white.

"Remember, now." The old wildling witch eyed the pair; the elder was the taller of the two. She favored the man who'd sired her; plain-faced, tall and stocky and strong, and she had his mouse-brown hair and eyes. She'd no talent for witchcraft, but she was brave and strong and fierce and skilled with spear and bow.

The younger of the two had been the one to receive the Sight. She favored the old witch; dark hair, dark eyes, small and quick. The bones of her face were too sharp for her to be considered a beauty, but she was clever, and stronger in the Sight than the old woman had ever been. The raven that was her companion was _hhrrking _to himself in the lower branches of the largest of the wierwood trees.

"Remember." The old woman said again. "I can open the door, but no more. Wherever they arrive, you must find them and bring them north. And it will be you who must send them home, when the time comes."

Her daughters nodded solemnly.

The old witch started singing. The language was old; older than men. It was as old as the huge wierwood trees surrounding the scrying pool; as old as the dragonglass arrowheads left by the children of the forest.

She touched a torch to the wierwood pyre. The wood flared into flame; she brought the knife down across the palm of her hand. Blood welled, black in the moonlight, and she swept a hand in front of her, scattering droplets into the flames. They spat and smoked.

The air had been still, but now the weirwood leaves stirred. Shapes stirred in the shadows, queer shapes that raised the hair on the nape of the neck. The old woman kept singing.

She kept singing as she climbed painfully onto the pyre; she was an old woman, after all. The branches of the weirwood trees creaked, and in the stirring shadows voices laughed and muttered.

She was still singing in that strange ancient tongue as she lay down. Flames licked at her hair and clothes as she raised the knife above her breast. Still singing, she plunged the knife into her heart.

Sometimes, just sometimes, futures can be changed. And the future changed now, pivoting around the single point of an old wilding witch and twisting into a new shape, and one of the most momentous events in a thousand years went utterly unnoticed by nearly everyone.


	2. Chapter 2

To George R.R. Martin; I make no more money from abusing your world than I do from G.I. Joe. Please don't sue me.

And the chain of events in Westeros starts to go off the established rails...now. God help everyone.

* * *

Snake Eyes would never in a million years ever admit to reading _Stranger in a Strange Land_. At least, to anyone but Shana, who already knew. He had a reputation to maintain, after all. It wouldn't do to have it get out that the Silent Master of the Arashikage, a silent and implacable avatar of death feared around the globe, had a secret fondness for Robert A. Heinlein.

But he had read _Stranger in a Strange Land. _He remembered in particular Valentine Michael Smith's ability to turn things ninety degrees to reality, effectively removing them from our plane of existence. He had not thought to ever find out what the people that Valentine Michael Smith had turned ninety degrees to reality must have felt like. But one moment he was giving a sullen and very smelly Timber a bath, and the next he was being squeezed through reality, and quite suddenly he could sympathize with the fictional victims of highly evolved Martian psychic powers.

It felt like that funny little feeling in the pit of your stomach that you got when you jumped out of a plane in a drop zone, just you hit terminal velocity and your internal organs started floating. Only through your entire body, which was then put through a blender. Topped off with a headache.

It wasn't pleasant.

For a moment, he thought he smelled wood smoke and burning hair, and singing floated in the air. But it was as ephemeral as the memory of a dream, and it was gone so fast that he might have imagined it.

The whole thing must have lasted less than a second, though it felt far longer. One heartbeat and he was rinsing suds out of Timber's fur with the hose in the motor pool. The next, he was blinking at a cloudless blue sky and getting an impromptu shower as Timber vigorously shook himself, sending water in all directions.

There was sand under him. That was odd. The Pit was in the desert, but the Utah desert that was their current location was more hard-baked clay and rock than sand. It was also hot. That wasn't unusual.

What _was _unusual was that it didn't smell right. The Pit always smelled of diesel and floor cleaner and gunpowder, of truck exhaust and metal and people. The air here smelled like...well, like desert. Sand and dust and sun.

Someone prodded him in the side. Or made a move to prod at him, anyway; the little sixth sense at the back of Snake's brain _tinged. H_e caught the hand before it made contact and bent the fingers back at an unnatural angle.

_"OW!" _

Snake Eyes let go of Tunnel Rat's hand and sat up, which did not help his headache. Tunnel Rat was shaking his hand and glaring at Snake Eyes. "See if I check and see if you're dead again, Snake."

*Don't poke me.* Snake Eyes surveyed the area.

Desert. Definitely desert. Sand dotted with scrubby little shrubs and a few sad-looking patches of tough wiry grass. It wasn't Utah, though, and he and Tunnel Rat weren't the only ones present. As far as he could tell, in fact, everyonein the Pit was here, as well as what appeared to be the entire contents of the armory and stores department.

Wherever 'here' was, anyway. The Joes were slowly picking themselves up out of the sand, looking various shades of bewildered, confused, and disconcerted.

Timber, who was apparently not feeling any better about the situation than Snake Eyes, whined and moved closer to Snake, leaning up against the ninja's legs. Snake Eyes scratched the wolf's head comfortingly. Still leaning against Snake, Timber raised his nose and sniffed the wind questioningly, his version of getting his bearings.

Snake Eyes blinked. Not just the Pit, apparently, because there was Storm Shadow, in full battle gear, his sword still in one hand, looking utterly bewildered. He _knew _that Tommy had been on a mission in Trucal Abysmia up until about twenty seconds ago. Judging from the crimson stains on Tommy's uniform and the blood dripping from the blade of his sword, that mission had been getting very interesting.

_"TOMMY!"_

The ecstatic shriek sounded very out of place amidst the general confusion. A black-haired blur elbowed Shipwreck out of the way and tackled Storm Shadow, knocking him off his feet. Tommy's sword fell to the sand, forgotten.

The blur was a woman. Snake Eyes recognized her; he'd seen just her once before, in a photograph that Tommy kept in the bottom of his sock drawer. Apparently it wasn't just the Joe team who'd been pulled to...wherever this was, then.

Storm Shadow didn't seem to be complaining about the overly enthusiastic greeting. At some point Junko had gotten Storm's mask off, and she was kissing him as if the world was about to end. Tommy, the present weirdness of the situation apparently forgotten, was giving as good as he was getting. Neither participant looked as if they planned on coming up for air anytime soon. Shipwreck was goggling at the couple, mouth hanging open. Several wolf whistles sounded, proving that soldiers are soldiers, even soldiers who have just been mysteriously transported to God only knew where.

Snake Eyes sighed and shook his head. Over in the sand, apparently not minding that by this point he had an appreciative audience, Tommy's hands were starting to stray into PG-13 rated territory.

_"WHUT THE FUCK IS GOIN' ON!?" _A familiar Alabama bellow echoed across the desert. It wasn't directed at the couple in the sand, however; Beach was some distance away, and Snake doubted that he could see through the small knot of curious onlookers that his sword brother was attracting. Tommy's hands were leaving a PG-13 rating in the dust and heading fast for a hard R. Snake Eyes sighed again, strode over and prodded Tommy not-so-gently in the ribs with the toe of his boot before things could escalate to NC-17.

Tommy finally came up for air and glared up at his sword brother. If looks could kill, Snake Eyes would have had a hole burned right through his skull. "_What?"_

*Not that I don't sympathize, but if you two could control yourselves for a couple of hours, we've got problems. If you didn't notice, shit just got weird. Also, hello.* He bowed politely to Junko, who was extricating herself from Tommy's arms, standing up, straightening her clothing and brushing sand off of herself.

Junko, who was wearing battered old yoga pants, sneakers, and an oversized t-shirt that looked like it would have fitted Tommy a lot better than her, nonetheless bowed formally, with poise that would have shamed an emperor. "The Silent Master, I presume? It is an honor. Tommy has told me a great deal about you."

Snake dipped his head in return.

"I noticed." Tommy retrieved his sword, frowned at it, and produced an oiled cloth from a hidden pocket. "But no one is trying to kill me now, which is an improvement over five minutes ago, and there were…other things that required my attention."

Activity was happening over in the vicinity of Beach and Duke. Snake Eyes distinctly heard Hawk barking orders, but he didn't hear his name attached to any of them yet.

"I saw." Shana's voice was dry. She moved up to stand beside Snake Eyes. "I think everyone saw, actually."

Junko glanced around, and seemed to notice the staring Joes for the first time. She went slightly pink. Apparently not put off by the elbow to the ribs, Shipwreck winked at her.

Tommy sheathed his sword, unfazed. "Junko, meet the G.I. Joe team, or part of it. Left to right, Dusty, Shipwreck, Tunnel Rat, Snow Job, Alpine, Spirit, Clutch, Zap, Ace, Ripcord, Chuckles, Lifeline, and Heavy Duty. All of whom can _put their eyeballs back in their heads before I remove them. _You'd think they'd never seen a man kiss a woman before."

*Kiss? You just got to second base.*

"Shut up. Junko, Snake Eyes, Snake Eyes, Junko. I've been training her, but you knew that already. Red, stop looking at me like that. Snake isn't the only one here allowed to have a girlfriend. Junko, this is Scarlett. For some reason I've never fathomed, my sword brother decided to go and fall in love with her. Now, does anyone know where the hell we are?"

"Dude." Tunnel Rat interjected. "_Dude. _You have a _girlfriend?!"_

"Is that so surprising? I was on the other side of the world from all of you five minutes ago, and had an ex-spetsnaz wet-team-for-hire trying to kill me. Junko was in Tokyo. What happened?"

"_You never said that you had a girlfriend!"_

"I wasn't aware that it was any of your business." Tommy shook sand out of his mask.

Dusty was shading his eyes with one hand and squinting at the horizon. "Judging from the angle of the sun, we're not far from the equator. And there's water to the east; I know mirages when I see them, and that's not a mirage." He pulled a small pair of binoculars out of his pocket, held them up to his eyes, and fiddled with the focus knobs. "Yep. Big body of water. Can't tell if it's a lake or an ocean, though." He poked at one of the sad little shrubby bushes clinging to life in the sand with the toe of his boot. "Huh." He crouched to examine the plant more closely, broke a leaf off and sniffed it. Apparently unsatisfied, he tossed the leaf away and turned over a nearby rock. Several many-legged creatures scuttled for cover. "_Huh._ That's weird."

"What's weird?" Alpine was squinting at the horizon too.

"I have no idea where we are." Dusty stood up again and dusted his hands off. "And I've never seen this kind of bush or this sort of scorpion before in my life."

"I thought you'd been to every desert on earth!" Snow Job was already shedding clothes.

"I have. That's the point. You don't want to take your shirt off, you know. You'll burn like tinder with that tender white skin of yours."

"Shut up. It's fucking _hot."_

Dusty shrugged. "Fine. Don't listen to the desert trooper while we're in the desert. "

"Storm Shadow has a _girlfriend!?"_ Tunnel Rat still seemed shocked by this.

"It would explain why he's been disappearing on 'personal leave' for a week every two months like clockwork." Spirit shrugged amiably. "I figured he had a woman somewhere. Didn't you notice he always came back in a good mood?"

"I would too, if I had a stone cold fox like that to go cozy up to." Clutch muttered this to Ace under his breath. "How come the ninja always get the hot women?"

"The 'fox' is right here." Junko's voice was sharp. "And she does not like being talked about as if she isn't present."

"Ooh. Feisty." Shipwreck grinned. "I like feisty. You ever get bored with the ninja, darling, just let me know. That offer still stands for you too, Scarlett."

It was at about that point that Snake Eyes heard Hawk yell his name, so he missed Shana kneecapping Shipwreck for the fourth time that week.


	3. Chapter 3

The body of water turned out to be a sea. Dusty liked hot weather, but even he could admit that the fresh salt breeze blowing inland felt good after the heat of the desert. This was particularly true when, as now, the personel of G.I. Joe were loaded down with more or less the entire stores and armory departments. It had taken some inventive thinking, but eventually sledges had been cobbled together out of tent poles and everyone had been loaded down with double field packs. There had been some grumbling about this, but it was mostly cosmetic. Everyone pulled their weight (in some cases, nearly double it).

It had already been afternoon when they'd been transported to wherever this place was. Dusty hadn't said anything yet, but he had sinking feeling that the situation was about to get even weirder than it already was. Some of the plant life was familiar, but not quite right. The scorpions and spiders were more or less the right shape but not quite, and were colored in patterned in ways that he'd never seen before. The desert hare that he saw bound away before them was a type he'd never seen. The snake he spotted sunning itself on a rock was entirely unfamiliar; based on the diamond-shaped head, he gave it a wide berth.

Dusty Tadur had been to every desert on Earth. He was intimately familiar with the plant and animal species of each; knowing where you could find food and which plants indicated water was the difference between life and death in the desert. He didn't want to say it out loud, because it sounded crazy, but he was having a hard time disputing the evidence of his own eyes.

He knew every desert on Earth. He didn't know this one. One plus one were adding up to impossible, but then Dusty had seen the impossible happen enough times to know to keep an open mind.

When the sun started going down, though, there wasn't any doubt at all. Hawk ordered them to stop for the night, and the Joes settled in with all the speed and efficancy of career soldiers.

The stars were brilliant here, in a way that Earth hadn't known since the invention of the incandesent bulb and air pollution. And not a single star was familiar. No Northern Star or Southern Cross. No Big Dipper or Summer Triangle. And while there was a band of light that somewhat resembled the Milky Way, the darker dust bands were all wrong.

It was Roadblock who finally broached the subject, as they were sitting around a small brushwood fire eating an MRE dinner.

"Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas any more." The big heavy machine gunner tossed a food wrapper into the fire.

"We're not." Dusty shook his head.

"Understatement of the century there, man." Tunnel Rat had his feet propped up on a largish rock and was lounging back against his field pack. "Unless I forget my high school science classes, which to be fair is possible, our stars have _never _looked like this. So, Toto, I don't think we're on _earth _any longer."

"What do you suppose happened?" Heavy Duty poked at the fire and threw another couple of branches on it. "This has Destro's fingerprints all over it."

"Wouldn't suprise me." Roadblock frowned. "But why hasn't he turned up to gloat about how well his new toy worked, then?"

Dusty shrugged. "Could be he just wanted us out of the way, and we lucked out and landed somewhere with breathable air."

"You know the odds against that?" Alpine raised his eyebrows over the top of his water bottle.

"Yeah. But you got a better explaination?" Dusty shrugged again.

Alpine mulled that over for a moment. "No."

"Me either."

"So how the fuck are we getting _back?" _Tunnel Rat swung his feet off of his rock and sat up.

There was an uncomfortably long period of silence.

"Great." 'Rat flopped back down. "We're screwed."

"Now, when have we ever been in a situation we couldn't get out of? First step would be finding out if anyone lives around here." Dusty pointed towards the surf with one thumb. "There's hoof prints down there in the damp sand. I don't know if the horses had riders, though."

"They did."

Everyone turned around. Stalker was standing behind them. "I followed them up the beach for a bit. The prints here got trampled too much for me to make out details, but further up that way there are some good ones. Those horses had shoes, and the prints were deeper than they should be for just horses. They were carrying riders. I already breifed General Hawk."

"They're horse prints?" Tunnel Rat frowned. "You're sure?"

Stalker looked mildly insulted. "I can identify four hundred animals based on prints alone. I know a horse track when I see one, 'Rat."

"Just making sure. Alpine, you were talking about odds...what're the odds that a planet aside from Earth has _horses?" _

Everyone was quiet for a moment.

"Boys," Roadblock broke the silence. "In my professional opinion, there's some weird shit going on. I've seen some weird shit in my day, but this here is some _really _weird shit."

Alpine raised his water bottle. "Amen to that, buddy."

Dusty spent some time later after he'd eaten poking about the local flora and fauna outside the camp with a flashlight. Like the deserts he was accustomed to, the animal life here was mostly nocturnal to escape the heat of the day. He counted six different types of scorpion, four different types of snake, about ten different kinds of spider, roughly a billion varied insects of varying types, a small slim-bodied fox with dun-colored fur, and far off he heard the distinctive yapping of coyotes.

One of the scorpions was large, nearly the size of an emperor scorpion. This one, however, was a dull rust-red with darker markings on its carapace. Dusty poked it with a stick; it snapped one pincer at him in a halfhearted sort of way but seemed more interested in the cricket it was eating.

"Aren't you a pretty girl?" Dusty gently ushered the scorpion into his helmet; it went docilely enough. "You look like a Ruby to me. You stick with me, my girl, and I'll make sure you get all the crickets you can eat."

Ruby, being a scorpion, didn't say anything. She did twitch her stinger in what Dusty thought was an agreeable sort of way.

Back in camp, Dusty set Ruby up in an empty ammo box, grabbed a sleeping bag from the hassled-looking greenshirt who'd been appointed as the makeshift stores clerk, and went looking for a good place to bunk out for the night. He finally found a nice soft patch of sand, which happened to be right next to where Storm Shadow had chosen to settle in for the night.

Storm Shadow, like most soldiers, could sleep just about anywhere on just about anything. Junko, however, was not a soldier. From what Dusty had gathered earlier when the sleeping situation had been made apparent, she wasn't even that big on camping. Not that she had _complained, _exactly, but the look of resignation in and of itself had conveyed the message.

Her prior misgivings notwithstanding, she was snoring quietly, snuggled down so far in her sleeping bag that all that was visible of her was forehead and hair. Tommy was still awake, sitting cross-legged on his sleeping bag and frowning intently at the edge of a knife.

To Dusty's eyes, the knife didn't appear to need the attention, and while he wasn't a ninja Dusty still knew a few things about sharpening cutlery. But then, Dusty suspected that Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes sharpened knives and cleaned firearms not because the weapons actually needed it, but because the ninja needed something to do to keep themselves occupied. In a strange sort of way, they reminded Dusty of his grandmother, who liked to crochet "to keep her hands busy."

Momentarally amused by the sudden mental image of a ninja surrounded by yarn and sweater patterns, Dusty ambled over and plonked himself down next to Tommy. "This spot taken?"

"No. Pull up some sand." Tommy fished a small whetstone out of his sack of gear. "I've shown her I don't know how many times how to properly sharpen a knife, and she still can't get an edge like I can." He eyed Dusty's ammo box warily as he oiled the stone. " Do I want to know what you have in there?"

"Probably not." Dusty opened the box and checked on Ruby; she was happily nibbling on a second cricket he'd caught and dropped in. "Ooh, you were a _hungry _girl."

Tommy shifted slightly further away, still eying the ammo box as if it was holding a switchblade. "Please shut that thing. Whatever that is, I really don't want to wake up with it in bed with me."

"She wouldn't hurt you." Dusty paused. "I don't think. The big ones usually aren't that venomous on Earth, but I suppose the rules could be different here. Oh, fine." He shut the ammo box again and secured the lid. "Happy?"

Tommy relaxed. "Yes. Thank you."

Dusty settled in. After a few minutes, though, he spoke again. "Can I ask you a question?"

"You can ask. Can't promise I'll answer."

"Why didn't you tell anyone?" Dusty nodded at Junko. "Lots of guys have a girl at home. You could have just said 'hey, I'm going home to see my lady for a week.' No one would have thought less of you for it. You didn't have to lie about it."

Storm glanced down at the woman and smoothed some hair back from her forehead. "It wasn't that. And to be fair, I didn't lie. I just said that I was going home to take care of some things. You filled in the blanks on your own; it's not my fault if you were wrong."

Dusty waited patiently.

Tommy sighed. "I have made a great many enemies over the years. Nearly all of them would be thrilled to get their hands on someone I care about. I don't want her put in danger or hurt just because she had the poor sense to get involved with me." He almost absently smoothed Junko's hair back again. "Gods know, I tried to discourage her. I wanted to do anything but, but I tried." A little smile. "She wouldn't have it. I can't say I'm sorry that she proved more stubborn than me."

"Never try to out-stubborn a woman." Dusty nodded sagely. "It never works. So why not tell us? We're not your enemies any longer."

"No. But many of your enemies are my enemies, and I know better than anyone that Cobra can be very, very good at getting information out of people. I told Snake Eyes and my aunt, but no one else. She was safer when no one knew about us. Even the Joes."

"Oh." Dusty mulled that over for a moment. _Ninja. _They couldn't do anything normally, even relationships. He thought of Snake Eyes and Scarlett, and quickly amended that thought. _Especially _relationships.

Still…Tommy was a good guy, once you got past the shell of cynicism, the tendency to mouth off, the my-issues-have-issues psychological trauma, the tendency towards casual violence, the seemingly universal ninja penchant for appearing right behind people without warning, and of course the fact that Dusty could remember several occasions when the ninja had killed friends of his. In a strange, ninja-y sort of way, Dusty supposed that hiding his girlfreind's existance from pretty much everyone was about as close to 'showing he cares' as Storm Shadow knew how to get.

Tommy glanced down at Junko again and smiled. Dusty blinked; it wasn't that normal smug, sly little knowing smirk that everyone on the team had come to associate with Storm Shadow. It was a true smile, one that crinkled the corners of the ninja's eyes and took at least five years off of his apparent age. "You know, whatever happened to bring us here, I can't really complain too much. I don't see her as often as I'd like. I'll take what I can get."

"Fair enough." Dusty settled in and closed his eyes. "Stalker says there's people here."

"I know."

Dusty cracked an eye open again. "What?"

Tommy tapped an ear. "I put them at about fifteen miles down the coast; the water's helping carry the sound. Some sort of settlement. I can hear people shouting every now and then, and horses."

"People as in _people?_ Like, human people?_"_

"Sounds like it." Tommy shrugged.

"Roadblock was right. This is just _weird." _


End file.
